My biking life as captured in kilobytes and text of my own and of friends I've met in the cycling community.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Tuesday Nighter & Madrone

One of the local mojo's called a Tuesday night ride @ Mac. This is going to be an on going Tuesday night ride, and the weather on Tuesday night was absolutely perfect. Mac is a relatively flat trail, strewn with rocks and roots, but mostly flowing buff single track. Not much climbing in the park, the few climbs are fun and will make you grunt if you're not in good shape (I'm in the worst physical shape of my life). I'm excited about this being a "regular" Tuesday night ride, as I haven't been terribly social over the last 19 months (how long I've been jobless)and this ride is the perfect opportunity to reconnect with some folks I haven't seen or ridden with in quite some time. The other bonus is that my new office is about 5 minutes away so I can bring the bike and gear to the office and get out there early for a little warm up. So back to our Tuesday ride... I was the first to show up, and as I pulled in to the over crowded parking lot, I was excited to find an empty spot. I started to pull into the space but had to stop short as the vehicle to my left had it's passenger front door open into the empty space. I rolled down my window after waiting for a few moments and politely requested that the driver might want to close the door. I was greeted by a 300+/- # "Native" woman who was all of 4'09" and quite the looker. After arguing with me about her "rights" the fatty finally closed her door and I parked. This was the highlight of the night, regrettably. I had a huge slice of humble pie on the trail, and realized that while I've maintained most of my technical skills, my fitness is that of a 98 year old. I have no idea what the mileage was for the night, and frankly I don't care. I was just stoked to be out and riding. Sadly no pictures were taken on the Tuesday nighter.

Friday was Kathy's last day off of work (she took a week off work to recover from her surgery). The plan was that we were going to have a "family" day, see a movie, and then go over to a friends house for dinner and games. The family movie turned into a movie with E and her friends and Kathy and her friend. I don't care for her friend, so I made the executive decision to go for a ride. I won't be able to ride at all next week as I'll be in Houston for work, but will resume the following week with the above Tuesday nighter. I managed to get a full lap in @ Madrone with a little playing around on a blowdown tree.

Before:

After:

The up and over still needs a little work, trees down here aren't as big around and therefore make build up on either side necessary.